I love seeing the TV tower from different parts of this city. Always makes me pause and think, “I live in Berlin.”

I feel like I’m always starting off blog posts or text messages with “it’s been a while,” and maybe that’s becoming a (bad?) habit of mine. Not sure why I do that, as it states the obvious, but I also feel that some level of acknowledgment is needed when I haven’t written or posted anything here in three years now.

So, hi again ;)

Not going to make excuses for why I haven’t been present here lately. As you know, there were lots and lots of things happening since 2019 - Covid, a rallying cry to act against global racism, political turmoil and upsets, the start of a war, international unrest, our planet burning, and slowly deteriorating, life and death, blah blah blah. It felt like there was never any time to get a break from it all. I guess that’s part of being an adult and living in this ever-turning world. There are a million things going on all at once, in our own lives, and in the lives of others around the world. It’s hard to make sense of what’s what, what’s happened, what day it is, and impossible to predict what’s coming next.

I get really caught up in the news and the whirlwind of life sometimes, for better or worse. Sometimes I feel like I care too much, and sometimes not enough. It’s just strange, the way we consume information—we are, on the one hand, able to access everything all at once from our phones, and even when we’re not on our phones, we are constantly bombarded with information at all times. The news is hard to avoid, especially since it has become social media eye candy. Super weird, in my opinion. The first place I usually learn about headline news is filtered directly to me via my Instagram feed, with some kind of eye-catching headline or graphic image of war or violence, juxtaposed by videos of puppies, animals getting saved in the wild, people getting pranked, and screenshots of snappy Tweets. Everything is a mishmash. Sometimes I feel my brain getting tired (and maybe even dumber?) because of it.

And, I continue to scroll and scroll.

Anyway, I think many can relate to this same phenomenon that is seemingly a normal part of our tech-dominant lives. Sometimes I wonder if I could be doing more. Actually, scratch that—I know I could be using my time more wisely, for sure. But what is it that I could be doing instead?

I started to think about that earlier this year and it has come up more and more recently in my reflections. I’ve been reevaluating my career, my personal life, and my hobbies, and trying to figure out the areas in which I’m feeling like there is room for change or improvement. Maybe it’s part of my nature to always want to be better and to do more, but sometimes I also feel like an imposter and start thinking that I really haven’t done much at all. Even when “positive” things happen in my life, like I get asked to do work on something because I was referred to someone based on my experience, knowledge, and skillset, and I think, “Oh no, I’m still going to have to prove myself to this person.” I constantly feel that we are always under this pressure to “prove” ourselves over and over again (or is it just me?) and it feels exhausting tbh. I suppose that’s just the world we live in. Or maybe, I just need to meditate again.

A photoshoot I did for a stock photo website. Random! — Randomly did a photoshoot for a stock image website. Random but fun :)

Speaking of meditation and mindfulness, I have not really done anything of the sort, not really even yoga, for the last few months. However, I am now a group fitness instructor here in Berlin. I have always had a love for sports and have done them my whole life, so I thought, why not try it? I also tend to get a bit nervous when public speaking, and I still do whenever I teach group classes of up to 28 people at a time. It has been a fun challenge to force myself to be in a personally uncomfortable position of speaking and instructing a group of people. I feel like the nerves never really go away—you just get over them faster the more you do it. As soon as I start speaking, I kind of go into autopilot. It’s not nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be. Teaching fitness itself is fun; the people are lovely, and it allows me to find and explore an identity of myself that has always been there, but that I don’t get a chance to utilize so often. When I first graduated from college, I moved to Mainland China to teach English; I guess that counts as my first professional experience where I needed to speak publicly. And then, of course, I did the whole Yoga Teacher Training thing, which I never really put into practice, but has come in handy nevertheless. The point is, I seem to return to this “teaching” role now and then, and it feels like something is there…

What else can I update you about?

Oh yeah, I passed my 4th-year mark moving to Germany on July 6th, 2022. Crazy that I’ve been living in Berlin for four years now. It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in my adult life. I really love it here, for all its flaws and frustrations, I enjoy it so much, and I really do think I could be here for a long time. That’s something I’ve never really felt before about other places that I’ve lived, even though those other cities still hold a special place in my memory. I guess we kind of lost about two years to the pandemic, so it feels like I’m still exploring this wild, dynamic city, and making it work for me.

Some friendships and connections I’ve made here will be for life. Even though there are always the ups and downs of being here as a non-native German speaker, I get by with my intermediate-level German. I can even do entire gynaecology appointments in German! Super proud to be able to say that now, especially because there was a time when I couldn’t even understand dates and times and showed up to an appointment when I completely misheard the date and arrived at a closed office. (And yes, I cried when that happened because I felt so silly.) So again, well done, me :) I’ve come a long way. Und es geht weiter.

One of my dearest friends in Berlin <3 us in Amsterdam

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, other than the fact that I suddenly woke up today with the urge to write stuff down. I decided to follow that urge and see where my thoughts take me, and here we are. I feel like I kind of lost interest in writing because that’s what I do in my job as a copywriter. I’m constantly writing marketing materials for a skincare startup here in Berlin—emails, banner ads, Instagram captions, etc. And while it’s fun and exciting and I’m learning a lot about e-commerce, it’s not as if I’m writing something for myself (I guess that’s what happens when you write for a living). Perhaps that’s why I don’t automatically want to write on the weekends or in my free time, and would rather do something else. But at the same time, it is something I enjoy doing, although I feel doing it as my job has taken some joy out of it, unfortunately.

I think I can be doing something more with my writing, as alluded to earlier in this long and rambling post. True to the name of this blog, I suppose I’m just feeling a little bit lost again. And somehow, I know it will be fine, and I’ll figure it out. Always do ;)

Until next time,

Steph